Jupiter's Auroras (IMAGE)
Caption
In this artist's rendering, flows of electrically charged ions and electrons accelerate along Jupiter's magnetic field lines (fountain-like blue curves), triggering auroras (blue rings) at the planet's pole. Accelerated particles come from clouds of material (red) spewed from volcanoes on Jupiter's moon Io (small orb to right). Recent observations of extreme ultraviolet emissions from Jupiter by satellite Hisaki (left foreground) and the Hubble Space Telescope (right) show episodes of sudden brightening of the planet's auroras. Interactions with the excited particles from Io likely also fuel these auroral explosions, new research shows, not interactions with particles from the Sun.
Credit
Credit: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency
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